They kissed again, in the passage of the little house.

“You will send away the carriage, Debbie?” Mary urged, without visible emotion.  “There are stables in the next street.  You will take off your hat and stay with me a little?”

“Indeed I will, dearest, if you will have me.  Are you alone?”

“Quite alone.”

“Where’s the old lady?”

“Oh, dead—­dead long ago.”

“And Ruby?”

Mary looked confused.

“Ruby?  Ruby is—­don’t you know?—­an actress in London.  Doing very well, they tell me—­“Miss Pearla Gold” in the profession.”

“Gracious!  Why, I’ve seen her!  Burlesque.  Tights.  The minx!  Well, she must be coining money, anyhow.  I hope she doesn’t forget to make some return for all the trouble she has been to you.”

“She forgets everything,” said the step-mother, “and we are thankful for it.  Bob hates the thought; it is hard on him, who is so different.  Don’t allude to it before him, please; he feels it too keenly.  Debbie, what did you think of my boy?” “Oh, splendid!” was the cordial response.  “I could hardly believe my eyes.”

“Is he not?” the fond mother urged.  “And it is not only his appearance, Debbie—­they say he is the cleverest lawyer in Melbourne.  He is so learned, so acute!  He has a practice already that many a barrister, well known and of twice his age, might envy.”

The pale woman—­for her bricky colour had faded out—­thrilled and glowed.

“Yes, he told me,” said Deb; “and it was good hearing indeed.  But I always knew what he had in him.’  To herself she said:  ’Why, if he is so well off, does he let her live like this?”

Poverty—­though decent poverty—­proclaimed itself in every detail of the mean terrace-house, which stood in the most depressing street imaginable.  It made the wealthy sister’s heart ache.

“And how are you yourself, Debbie?” Mary remembered to ask, as she shut the door upon the departing carriage.  “You look well.  How is Francie?  We want you to tell us all about her grand doings.  Bob is greatly interested in his Italian aunt; he thinks he would like to take a vacation trip to see her some day.  By the way, did he tell you that Rose has another?  Isn’t she a perfect little rabbit?  And quite delighted, Keziah says.”

As she talked in this detachment from her personal affairs, she led the way up bare stairs to her small bedroom.  The resplendent woman behind her took note of the widow’s excessive thinness, the greyness of her straight, tight hair, the rigid lines of a black stuff gown that had not a scrap of trimming on it—­not even the lawn sleeve-bands widows use—­and thought of Bennet Goldsworthy’s old-time annoyance when his wife was proved to have fallen behind the mode.  And as she expatiated upon the charms of Rose’s eleventh baby, Deb’s bright dark eyes roved about Mary’s room, in which she recognised a few of the plainer furnishings of the nuptial chamber of the past.